Bovine Fasciolose in bayerischen "Bio-Betrieben": Prävalenz und Risikofaktoren

It was the aim of the study at hand to gather the prevalence of Fasciola hepatica specifically for ecological dairy farms all across Bavaria. As the passing on of the common liver fluke mainly occurs on pastures and by means of the grass which is fed in sheds, and due to the fact that pasturing is very common on cattle farms which produce ecologically, animals of such farms are highly endangered to contract this kind of endoparasite. As a result, an empirical study was conducted in order to ascertain whether further risk factors for infections with Fasciola hepatica – besides pasturing – can be identified on farms with ecological production. Thus, it could be possible to detect prophylactic measures which could help ecological dairy farms to reduce the usage of medication. In the prevalence study both 366 ecological dairy farms and 366 conventional cattle farms across Bavaria were serologically tested for Fasciola hepatica by taking bulk milk samples via ELISA. The prevalence of 46.99 % of the ecological cattle farms significantly differed from the prevalence of 35.79 % of conventional cattle farms (p = 0,0021). The risk factor study aimed at detecting possible risk factors for passing on Fasciola hepatica, which play a major role in ecological production, by analysing survey data of 70 cattle farms. With the help of this part of the study, some risk factors could be found, however, they did not significantly differ from known risk factors for passing on Fasciolosis mentioned in previous published work. This study encourages farmers in their effort to reduce or even prevent new infections or reinfections of their bovines by changing certain parameters – which have now been examined as risk factors for passing on the common liver fluke

Eine neue Domäne der IL-6 Rezeptor β -Kette, gp130, vermittelt Zellwachstum und die Aktivierung der Kinasen Hck und Erk

IL-6 spielt eine entscheidende Rolle für die Entstehung vieler Krankheiten, ins-besondere des Plasmozytoms. Über die molekularen Mechanismen die daran be-teiligt sind, lagen allerdings bisher wenig Daten vor. Aufgrund eigener Vorarbei-ten war bekannt, dass IL-6 die Src-Kinasen Hck, Fyn und Lyn aktiviert. Ziel die-ser Arbeit war es, genauere Erkenntnisse über die genauen Mechanismen dieser Aktivierung zu gewinnen. Mittels Mutationsanalysen wurde eine „saure Domäne“ zwischen den Aminosäu-ren 771 und 811 von gp130 als Bindungsregion für die Src-Kinase Hck identifi-ziert. Dieses Bindungsmotiv wurde bisher noch nicht für gp130 beschrieben. Die Bindung von Hck an gp130 war unabhängig von den benachbarten Bindungsstel-len für Shp-2 (Y759) und STAT3 (Y767, Y814). In faktor-abhängig wachsenden Baf-B03 Zellen resultierte die Deletion der Hck-Bindungsdomäne (d 771-811) in einem deutlich reduzierten Wachstum nach Stimulation von gp130. Die Aktivität der Src-Kinase Hck war in d-771-811 Transfektanten im Vergleich zu wt gp130 exprimierenden Zellen (Eg) deutlich reduziert. In d 771-811 exprimierenden Zel-len war außerdem die Aktivierung von Erk sowie die Deaktivierung und Dephosphorylierung von Pyk2 unterbrochen. Daher scheint der Signalweg an dem Hck beteiligt ist einen wesentlichen Einfluss auf die Vermittlung von Wachstumssignalen, die über gp130 stimuliert werden, zu besitzen. Zur Zeit werden die weiteren Signale untersucht, die durch über den Hck/gp130-Komplex vermittelt werden. Da IL-6 der ein wesentlicher Wachstumsfaktor in der Entstehung des Plasmozy-toms und die Expansion von frühen hämatopoetischen Vorläuferzellen ist, sollen diese Untersuchungen zur Identifizierung krankheits-relevanter Signalproteine oder -domänen führen. Diese Signalproteine würden dann wichtige Ziele für eine molekular definierte Therapie des Plasmozytoms darstellen

Evaluating annotations of an Agilent expression chip suggests that many features cannot be interpreted

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>While attempting to reanalyze published data from Agilent 4 × 44 human expression chips, we found that some of the 60-mer olignucleotide features could not be interpreted as representing single human genes. For example, some of the oligonucleotides align with the transcripts of more than one gene. We decided to check the annotations for all autosomes and the X chromosome systematically using bioinformatics methods.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Out of 42683 reporters, we found that 25505 (60%) passed all our tests and are considered "fully valid". 9964 (23%) reporters did not have a meaningful identifier, mapped to the wrong chromosome, or did not pass basic alignment tests preventing us from correlating the expression values of these reporters with a unique annotated human gene. The remaining 7214 (17%) reporters could be associated with either a unique gene or a unique intergenic location, but could not be mapped to a transcript in RefSeq. The 7214 reporters are further partitioned into three different levels of validity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Expression array studies should evaluate the annotations of reporters and remove those reporters that have suspect annotations. This evaluation can be done systematically and semi-automatically, but one must recognize that data sources are frequently updated leading to slightly changing validation results over time.</p

Classifying Compliant Manipulation Tasks for Automated Planning in Robotics

Many household chores and industrial manufacturing tasks require a certain compliant behavior to make deliberate physical contact with the environment. This compliant behavior can be implemented by modern robotic manipulators. However, in order to plan the task execution, a robot requires generic process models of these tasks which can be adapted to different domains and varying environmental conditions. In this work we propose a classification of compliant manipulation tasks meeting these requirements, to derive related actions for automated planning. We also present a classification for the sub-category of wiping tasks, which are most common and of great importance in service robotics. We categorize actions from an object-centric perspective to make them independent of any specific robot kinematics. The aim of the proposed taxonomy is to guide robotic programmers to develop generic actions for any kind of robotic systems in arbitrary domains

New approach for a comprehensive method for urban vehicle concepts with electric powertrain and their necessary vehicle structures

By the strict discussions regarding energy saving and the goal to reduce CO2 emissions to 95g CO2/km, which is specified for the year 2020, [1] there is a keen demand for lighter and lightweight designed automotive structures to support the energy saving targets. In view of a holistic approach and also to prospectively meet the requirements of the automotive sector, beside the previously mentioned challenges, economic and production-orientated aspects, as well as joining technologies, within the scope of multi-material design, have to be considered to realize a great leap forward medium to large-scale productions. To achieve these goals, a comprehensive method for urban vehicle concepts with electric powertrain and their necessary vehicle structures is presented. The dimensions and packaging of the presented vehicle is based on demands of a future urban vehicle with space for four occupants including baggage, steerable front system wheels and a rear axle including an electric powertrain. At the beginning of the method the relevant user requirements, e.g. space for persons and baggage, range for the urban vehicle are defined. In addition, input variables are discharged through the state of the art of electric vehicles. It is also an important point in this step to look on further requirements such as crash requirements or requirements for electrical components in the vehicle design. With the defined requirements the package of the urban car has to be defined. Two paths are determined to a geometrically and a simulative way. The simulative consideration is limited to the vehicle longitudinal dynamics, thus a rough dimensioning of the drive components is derived. The outputs of the simulation are the performance measures which are then converted into components for the overall model for dimensioning for example electric motor or battery. The geometric design phase begins with the positioning of the occupants in the passenger compartment and ergonomic layout. Based on this conception of the complete vehicle, various FEM optimizations (topology, topography, size) are carried out for the body in white in order to construct structures towards individual (functional) components/modules. This top-down approach raises the opportunity to extract constructive innovations, which must be integrated within this early concept phase, also to reduce costs when aiming to development of a series product. With this holistic approach a load-specific optimized structural design is virtually generated and evaluated, and also an outlook on dynamic loads (crash behavior) is given. The focus here is on the potential in innovations by the definition of novel package alignments in combination with the useful application of multi-material-design method, resulting in a light modular vehicle structure

Innovative design steps towards a safe active lightweight chassis for an electric vehicle

Lightweight design is still very important for an all-electric vehicle especially when used in urban areas. A new active chassis suspension designed for such an urban car is in development at the DLR. The first main component is a composite transverse leaf spring, where a new (partly) automated design and dimensioning process is in development. The second component is an orbital wheel bearing with an optional integrated electrical drive. The third component is an innovative wheel independent two axis steering actuator changing the toe and camber angle. This enables an increase of the active and passive safety of the occupants. First simulations proved the benefits of the concept regarding enhanced crashworthiness. The modular concept of the system allows to use the same wheel at each corner of the vehicle without changing a single part, thus reducing vehicle part variants and costs

Automated generation of physical surrogate vehicle models for crash optimization

A challenge in the design and optimization of vehicle structures is the high computational costs required for crash analysis. In this paper an automated model generation for simplified vehicle crash models is presented. The considered crash load cases are the US NCAP (100 %, 56 km/h), the Euro NCAP (40 %, 64 km/h) and the IIHS Small Overlap (25 %, 64 km/h). The generation of the physical surrogate vehicle models is based on different sub-steps which were automated using a process chain. With this process chain it is possible to evaluate very efficiently the influence of structural modifications on the global crash behavior. During the model generation the crash behavior of the surrogate model is directly compared with the full vehicle model to enable a direct assessment of the model quality. Since the interface, where the model is cut, is an important factor for the obtained correlation, different interface positions were analysed. With obtained solutions it is possible to identify the interface position, which fulfils the required correlation by a given computational time. Additionally, the interface discretisation is analyzed to identify the model configuration with the highest correlation. This investigation was performed for three different vehicle models